Your team finished something difficult. They released it. You celebrated the team’s accomplishment with the team. Let’s assume your name is Jim. Now, you’re in a senior management meeting, where your boss says, “Thanks, Jim, for all that hard work.” You feel great from that recognition. And yes, you supported that team. You facilitated some […]
Are you wary of asking for help? You might feel weak. Or, you might worry your colleagues see you as weak or incompetent. You might not feel safe if you want to ask for help. However, very few of us know everything we need. Or can do everything we want to accomplish without asking for
One of my clients wants to use shared services “teams” as they start their agile transformation. Their developers work on a product for months and years at a time. However, the testers and UI people are part of pools of people. The organization calls these testers and UI people, “shared services.” Shared service-thinking denies the
A manager said to me, “I’m responsible for this department of people.” I asked, “What does that mean?” He said, “I’m responsible for managing the people. I also define the products and what the people need to deliver.” I said, “That seems like a lot of work.” He nodded. “I’m exhausted. I work all the
Someone asks you for information and you don’t know the answer. Maybe a senior manager asks, “When can the customers expect this particular feature?” Or your manager asks, “How does this specific architecture work for our product?” A colleague or a person you serve asks, “Why are we doing this?” You might freeze and not
At a recent talk about the Career Ladder posts, someone asked this question: Can managers pair effectively? That’s a great question. Some managers job-share. However, they don’t work simultaneously on the work. One person works for a couple of days. That person then hands off work to the other person. The handoff might work in
You want business agility. The teams have worked hard to change how they work. And you realize your current career ladder isn’t working for you—or the people you serve. The people and teams continue to experiment with agile behaviors. You would like more lateral, not just vertical options to support any person’s growth. What can
As people gain experience, they often want new and different responsibilities. In a typical career ladder (Part 1), they had one direction: up. That often creates a problem: great technical people become insufficient managers. Let’s not blame these people—many of them didn’t want to become managers However, if people want more responsibility, the career ladder
Part 1 discussed a typical career ladder. I said that when we focus on individual achievements and deliverables, we ignore the agile system of work. Worse, when we reward individual achievements we prevent an agile culture. That’s because agile teams learn together as they create the product. We need career ladders that reward working together.
As I’ve been speaking about the Modern Management Made Easy books, people ask these questions: We’re pretty good with our agile approach. It’s time for performance reviews. How do we reward someone based on individual work when we want teams to work together? What do we do? Can we extend whatever that is to our